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Weekly Snapshot: Tech News To Know Mar 7 – 11

Believe it or not, we don’t cover every piece of tech news here at SnapMunk. In an effort to keep you apprised of all things relevant in the world of technology and startups, here are some noteworthy tech news items that didn’t get a full column this week but certainly deserve a glance.

If you happen to live in Japan and happen to own an 8k television (I fit into neither category), you’ll be able to watch around 130 hours of the 2016 Rio Olympics in glorious 8k. Of course, an 8k television costs around $130,000, so the viewing audience will less than huge (and by, “huge”, I mean, “six people”). Those of us who aren’t absurdly wealthy will have to settle for 1080p.

The F-35 jet, which has already cost over $1 trillion dollars to develop, has had repeated problems with its radar system. The solution is one well-known to IT help desk professionals: reboot the system. The radar issues are just one of many problems that have plagued the development of the F-35, as The Pentagon outlined in a report last month. Maybe we should just outsource all jet development to Google.

Bill Gates recently held a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA). These sessions almost always begin with the author verifying themselves via photo, but rather than simply snapping a photo of himself with his smartphone, Gates chose to recreate a photo of his very chill teenage self. I can’t help but wonder if those are the exact same shoes.

I don’t understand or care about the game Go, but apparently it’s considered a benchmark for artificial intelligence. The level of intuition required to play the game has made it notoriously difficult for AI to defeat humans at the game. No longer. AlphaGo, which was developed by Google’s DeepMind unit, defeated legendary Go player Lee Se-dol. For the 3 of you who care about Go, you can watch the matches live on YouTube.

Leading the way in the “Creepy As Hell” category, Chinese authorities are developing a “unified information environment” that will allow them to profile citizens based on online behavior, financial transactions, local and international travel habits, and personal acquaintances. In theory, the profiles created will allow them to identify and investigate suspicious behavior and people who are perhaps more likely than average to commit a crime in the future. Hopefully it works out better for the Chinese than it did for Tom Cruise.

Apparently people really, really like comic book movies. In 2016, there will be around 900 minutes (15 hours) of comic book movies in theaters. That’s over 150 minutes more than the previous high (734 minutes) in 2005. Seriously people – do we really need this many comic book movies? I need a time management system just to watch them all.

Hackers managed to get into the servers of Bangladesh Bank, which then gave them credentials to make online transfers. They then sent 13 money transfer requests from organizations in the Philippines and Sri Lanka to the Federal Reserve in New York. The Fed allowed 4 to go through for a total of $81 million, but the 5th was flagged by a bank in Germany after “foundation” was misspelled. Once alerted, officials stopped the remaining transactions, which totaled around $850 million. That has to be the most expensive spelling mistake in history.

Stephen Altrogge is a freelance writer based in Tallahassee, Florida. He writes about tech, marketing, faith, and lots of other things. He’s married to Jen and has three young girls. Every day he consumes more coffee than the entire population of Colombia. He knows more about Star Wars than any respectable man should, and he runs more than any sane man would. He once attempted to eat a 2 pound hamburger in under an hour. He failed.

It was hard enough to watch Minority Report assuming it was something that could happen some day, but now China is all over that huh? It does not surprise me. I hope to read how well, or not, it works for them.